Thankfully, during Rain’s visit, Amelia's nausea subsided. With any luck, her head injury would feel better tomorrow and she'd stop being so dizzy all the time. Luck, however, seemed seldom inclined to be on her side. She thought about this as she stood behind the door, listening to the sound of Rain’s receding footsteps.

  Ready to call it a night, she went to brush her teeth. Now that the nausea had eased for one of the first times in the day, she felt an overwhelming fatigue slam into her. She didn’t turn the light on, for fear that the bright light would hurt her tired eyes. So, the room only held the dim glow of pale moonlight. Just enough to see the mirror and the counter.

  Her eyelids became heavy and drooped, and even her blinking became long and lingering. It was during one of these half-asleep moments, toothbrush in hand, that she snapped her eyes wide open at a horrifying sight.

  In the mirror stood a twisted, distorted version of herself. The toothbrush slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor as she took in the vision of herself with snake-like tendrils of hair wriggling around her face. Cloudy, gray eyes and a deathly pallor on her skin made her unrecognizable. And something else also appeared: a purple-black band of bruising across her neck. She looked like the woman from her nightmare but also like herself, in a rather grotesque amalgam of the two.

  Gasping, she stumbled and barely caught herself on the edge of the countertop. As soon as her fingers landed, she felt a cool, gelatinous puddle around her fingers and heard a wet squelch as she yanked them away. This goo felt just like the stuff she had tripped on in the shower.

  She swung her bulging eyes back to the mirror, but the vision was gone.

  A thought that gave her little comfort appeared. Perhaps it had never been there in the first place. Perhaps she wasn’t used to living alone and was starting to see things in the shadows because she was so lonely. Perhaps it had just been a dream forged from her half-dreaming, exhausted mind.

  She opened her fists and turned her slime-coated fingers in front of her. A mixture of fury, fear, and disgust made them quiver. She didn't understand why this goo kept popping up, but there had to be a reasonable explanation. It had to be scum, mold, or mildew. Grunting, she yanked the can of bathroom cleaner from the toilet tank and engulfed the slimy countertop in a foamy citrus cloud. Then she wiped it all down and washed her hands. She washed her hands again. And then thrust them under the water a third time for good measure. Still, they felt unclean.

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  "Stop it! Leave me alone!" She shouted to the dark bathroom. Only her voice echoing off the walls answered her. She didn't know who she was talking to: her own frenzied mind, or the house. But whatever it was that kept ruining every possible moment of repose in this house, she needed it stop. She put her forehead into her hands and let herself sob for a moment. Unfairly, sobbing made her head injury ache and throb. She couldn’t even fucking cry in this house.

  With that thought, the crying transitioned to manic laughter. She let her hands fall and looked at herself in the mirror: disheveled, exhausted, and looking sick as a dog. This was just new house jitters, wasn’t it? This was just a post-breakup breakdown, right? This was just the result of head trauma that wasn’t investigated because of a lack of health insurance, you know? There were reasonable explanations for all her suffering.

  The slime was probably some weird house issue that had a reasonable explanation and a simple (but likely pricey) solution that she could get from a contractor as soon as she made enough money to hire one. There was no need to lose her mind over this stuff.

  She dressed down to a tank top and underwear to sleep and crawled into her pallet of blankets. The hardwood floor made for an unforgiving surface for her back and her aching head, and she heard it creak every time she turned and tossed.

  Another thing was keeping her awake as well. Rain's face kept appearing in her mind when she closed her eyes. She kept replaying their conversation from today over and over, thinking of how she could have been less awkward. As a loose nail dug into her shoulder blade, she also considered that maybe she should have taken him up on the offer to borrow his guest bed after all.

  Finally, she drifted off into a much-needed slumber. But it didn’t last long at all before she heard the tapping.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Amelia sat up, tangled in a mess of blankets and not fully conscious of what it was that had woken her. She wiped the crust from her eyes and groaned. She looked at the clock on her phone: 3:00 a.m. She'd only been asleep for two hours and she was already awake again. Looked like being well-rested for her first day at work wasn't in the cards.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Seeing as Amelia hadn't lived in the house that long yet, she wasn't familiar with its soundscape. She knew that each house has its own unique brand of groans, squeaks, and creaks. And the habits of this house were still unknown to her. So, the sound did not concern her as much as it annoyed her. She stuffed her head into her pillow and covered her ears. The mystery could wait until tomorrow, she thought, as she squeezed her eyes shut.

  TAP, TAP, TAP.

  Somehow, the noise became louder even though she had covered her ears. Amelia let the pillow fall away from her head and pushed herself upright in the darkness. A hazy beam of moonlight bisected the room from the window. And as Amelia watched the moonbeams dance, she saw a barely perceptible flutter of the dust bunnies on the floor as the noise sounded again, this time even louder.

  TAP! TAP! TAP!

  Those dancing dust motes told her what she feared the most—that the sound was coming from beneath the floor.